Samsung's 256GB Memory Chip: Here's How It Helps

If there's one thing that is certain, it seems like the next generation of mobile phones will be bigger. Well, maybe not in physical dimensions, but certainly in memory. Samsung has recently announced that it will be releasing a 256GB flash embedded memory chip, designed to be used in future high-end devices.

Sure, 256 GB memory cards are quite common nowadays, but Samsung's memory chip is not an external card. Rather, it is an upgrade on the phone's native memory itself, which means that users of high-end phones in the future might very well be able to say goodbye to the notorious "not enough storage" message that modern-day smartphones have been very fond of showing.

Samsung's new memory chips, based on the "next-generation" Universal Flash Storage (UFS) standard according to the South Korean tech giant, are said to be almost twice as fast as an SATA SSD, which is already the golden standard for current desktops and laptops on the market. The new chips are also allegedly about three times faster than high-performance external memory cards.

With the new UFS development, Samsung might be trailblazing a completely new era of mobile devices --an era where external memory cards will no longer be needed. After all, expandable storage, though very convenient and economical, has never really matched up to the speed and performance of a smartphone's internal memory.

Recent developments, such as Android 6.0 Marshmallow, have managed to create a workaround for the discrepancy in speed between a smartphone's internal and external memory, utilizing an adoptive memory feature that allows a device to treat an external card as an internal memory device.

As creative as the feature is, however, it has not been embraced by most Android-powered devices, especially its two most prominent vendors, LG and Samsung.

Then again, Samsung has always been a company that produced the most reliable and cost-effective memory chips, to the point that even its main rival in the smartphone field, U.S.-based Apple, utilized the South Korean tech giant's flash storage in the older generations of the iPhone.

Of course, with Apple devices facing increasing pressure from consumers to feature more memory, Samsung's next-generation UFS might be the answer once more. After all, the era where iPhones start at 16GB is quickly ending, with the measly storage space becoming almost amusing considering the flagship handset's premium starting price.

Thus, it would not be much of a surprise if Samsung's next flagship devices, as well as Apple's upcoming iPhone 7, will feature the South Korean giant's new UFS chips. If such a thing does happen, smartphone users can rest assured that a new generation of mobile computing has officially begun.